Composers

Tarik O'Regan

Publisher: Novello & Co

Se Lamentar Augelli (2008)

Commissioned by the Harvard Glee Club Foundation for the Harvard Glee Club, on the occasion of the anniversary of the 30th anniversary of Dr Jameson N. Marvin as Director of Choral Activities at Harvard University

Se lamenter augelli was commissioned by the Harvard Glee Club Foundation for the Harvard Glee Club, on the occasion of the anniversary of the 30th anniversary of Dr Jameson N. Marvin as Director of Choral Activities at Harvard University.

Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) [1304-1374]
Canzionere [297], ed. Marco Santagata, (Mondadori: Milan, 1996)
If I hear birds lamenting, or green leaves
that summer breeze is stirring very softly,
or the faint murmur of the lucid waters
that run along beside a flowery bank

where I am sitting, lost in thought and writing,
I see her, then, whom Heaven reveals, earth hides,
I see her and I hear and understand her,
as from afar she answers to my sighing:

“Why do you waste yourself before your time?”
she asks me, full of pity. “Why pour out
this river of affliction from your eyes?

“Don’t weep for me, for dying made my day
an endless one, and when I closed my eyes
I opened them to one great inner light.”

Translated by David Young
The Poetry Petrarch
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux: New York, 2004)